Pretending to be Someone Else

It is that time of year that people dress up and have fun being someone else for the night. Some people like to live out, even if just for a night, the idea of being that thing they have always wanted to be. Others dress up to make a statement, such as mocking popular cultural figures, religion, or politics. I think this sort of escapism and freedom is pretty healthy. I might be biased though, since my mom owned a costume shop as I was growing up I benefitted from people’s desire to dress up and play out an alternative role.

Some people, however, play out an alternative role throughout the year, without letting others see their true self. This is perhaps most frequently done out of fear that their true self is unacceptable. A number of psychologists have written about this phenomenon across the years. Carl Rogers referred the idea of the “authentic self,” in which he meant living as one is naturally, rather than to please the people around you or as one thinks he or she should be. Karen Horney described the conflict between the “real self” and the “ideal self” as a “tyranny of the shoulds.” In this she referred to the rules that we put upon our own thoughts and behaviors that lead us toward a perceived perfection: the things we should do. She considered this a root cause of neurosis.

In existential theory, which I tend to follow, the term for the neurosis that occurs is called existential guilt. This is different from what I call “catholic guilt,” which is the guilt for having engaged in behavior that is against one’s own moral code. I use the term “catholic guilt” because it easily expresses the idea that one feels he or she has violated a sacred rule—the pangs of moral consciousness that we all experience from time to time. Catholic guilt is a guilt that we can apologize for. Existential guilt is the guilt (anxiety) we feel for living in ways that are not what we know to be true of ourselves. Existential guilt cannot be apologized for, because the person being offended is oneself. Existential guilt often leads us to engage in specific behavior that generate catholic guilt—we do things that we feel or know violate our own moral code in order to appear to be the person we want to be (seen as), rather than the person we know ourselves to be.

I have consistently found that my clients engage in behaviors that are not in their best interest and violate their own moral code in order to appear more like their “ideal self.” They will lie or cheat in order to not destroy the image they have created for the world to see—the person they think they are supposed to be. They do things that do not feel right to them in order to appear as they “should” appear: I should have been able to get that project completed so I will tell everyone that I did and just wing it. The engage in immoral behavior in order to appear as moral.

In reality, people know that others are flawed. We all recognize that no one lives up to their ideal self. When I have been able to convince my clients to be more honest about their errors, explain the reasons for them, and take responsibility for them, they have found that the people around them have been very understanding and accepting. In being honest about the ways in which we are not perfect we experience less existential guilt and subsequently engage in fewer behaviors that cause “catholic guilt.” Pretending to be someone else on Halloween is fun, but doing it throughout the year usually causes more problems than it solves.